Posts in Category ‘News’

When attending an international conference, Robert M. Ewers, professor of ecology at Imperial College London, found that 34 interesting talks lasted, on average, a punctual 11 minutes and 42 seconds. In contrast, the 16 boring ones he recorded dragged on for 13 minutes and 12 seconds …

A new video resource for introductory training on the 3Rs The NC3R published a new educational video on the 3Rs (replacement, refinement and replacement) on their web page. It is a great resource, you might want to check it out! Example of how to perform randomization …

The importance of reporting small details and making well-informed decisions about which information to include for each experimental parameter/factor in scientific publications can be demonstrated by the following example: Lipopolysaccharide (LPS) is the major component of the cell wall surface of gram-negative bacteria. It is an …

Do studies with negative results have value or not? We hope that majority of our readers would agree that high-quality results originating from properly designed and conducted studies do have value, irrespective of whether the outcome is positive or negative (null). A recent post by John …

Facing a seemingly intractable problem, we are often moved to go for any fast solution – just not to deal with this problem any longer. Such radical solutions may have adverse effects but, as the saying goes: “You have to break an egg to make an …

by Elena Koustova In the long gone Soviet higher (university-based) education system there were no electives. As aspiring biologists (e.g. natural scientists) at the Moscow State University, we were expected to study all kinds of physical and formal sciences, all with equal degree of dedication and …

In this article, 29 independent research teams used the same data set to address the same research question: whether soccer referees are more likely to give red cards to dark-skin-toned players than to light-skin-toned players. Analytic approaches varied widely across the teams and 20 teams (69%) …

While L-DOPA remines the gold standard symptomatic treatment for Parkinson’s disease (PD), its long-term use is often associated with motor fluctuations and dyskinesias. Currently, amantadine produces the most potent antidyskinetic effect in PD. However, side effects evoked by this drug limit its use, making treatment of …

Today, the probability of successfully publishing negative/null results in biomedical research is lower than that for positive results. For instance, negative results repeatedly remain in lab books or drawers, or are not being published because they are rejected by scientific journals. These seemingly positive results then …